Whatever Happened to #TimHunt?

It's been just about a year since Tim Hunt's remarks about women scientists at a lunch at a journalists' conference in Seoul and on BBC radio ("I did mean the part about having trouble with girls": 10 June 2015). I chronicled first the media storm that broke out (Tim Hunt Timeline in July), and then the "un-calm" after the storm (September).

Although the issue had stopped being widely-covered and discussed in the general media within a week in the US and within 6 weeks in the UK, the debate over what had happened was still raging. I updated the post on 25 October, but within a few weeks a trio of major posts arrived on Medium.

Hunt answered questions about the incident and aftermath in 2 recorded interviews:

Andrew Macfarlane interviewed Hunt in July 2015, and uploaded to YouTube on 5 October (final questions about scientists, family life, and the storm over his remarks begin at 1 hour 31 minutes: just under half an hour).

Below I've gathered major media discussions or references to Tim Hunt or the controversy in major English-language media via US Google News, picking up from the September listing. There was a small increase in December, with the controversy's inclusion in some roundups of events in 2015, and coverage of Hunt's plans to live in Japan following Mary Collins' appointment to the position of director of research at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology.

Other than that, coverage has continued to taper off, but not disappear. The amount of coverage reduced - never reaching more than a handful a day - with far less attention going to each item than earlier. Coverage reduced within the pieces themselves as well: it was mostly brief references to the incident in the context of articles about sexism, behavior on the internet, journalism, and/or freedom of speech (on campuses in particular). The division of opinion that characterized coverage from the start, remains.

While the issues raised by the remarks, and the response to the remarks, have consistently been the main topics in the wider community, a lot of the discussion in blogging and other social media circles has been investigating and contesting details of what happened and why.

Although much has been added (and much remains without corroboration), accounts have coalesced around the once heavily-contested issue of what Hunt actually said in Seoul. In July, I had come to the conclusion that Deborah Blum's 16 June report was the most reliable account of the broad content of the remarks (beginning with positive statements about women scientists, then the remarks about "the trouble with girls" and single-sex labs, then encouragement to women scientists again). That those elements were contained in his remarks no longer seems to be contested - although the nuance and intentions remain in dispute. (I've updated the additional listing of eye-witness accounts, too.)

Those debates have been critically important to the people and institutions most closely affected, but they have not attracted the wide intensity of attention as there had been in June. Here again is a chart of the media coverage from my September post. I've signaled 2 events that had an impact on the trajectory of coverage - Mensch's entry into the debate, and the event I believe was the most influential in extending major media interest in the UK: the UCL Council meeting to consider the case, and the lobbying to affect its outcome.

Another angle to get an idea of general community interest in the UK is to look at search results in Google Trends. Here are the results for Tim Hunt (the academic):

Here is the same search set against interest in a more famous British scientist for additional perspective:

This was another case where, as important as it was for the lives of some people and institutions who had to deal with the repercussions of the episode, what followed didn't have anywhere near the same community reach as what happened in the first days. The most frequent messages that are now entrenched in mentions? Remarks like these are social anathema to many, that it (or what poured out afterwards) indicates the problems of sexism in science - and that many are concerned about the price to individuals of public mis-steps. Regardless of what happened to Tim Hunt, the person, "Tim Hunt" also now has a hashtag life - as a byword or poster child on several hot button issues.

I stopped monitoring media on the controversy around Tim Hunt in August 2015. I've added here pieces in major media from English-speaking countries since 26 October 2015, because they were included in the English language (US) Google News feed (from any country) either about Tim Hunt, or mentioning him in the context of the controversy or women in science or free speech (and including Huffington Post). (I also searched within some outlets, but not systematically.)

5 March: The Sunday Times, Sian Griffiths: Experiment with emotion. (Interview with Emily Grossman, who had done a TedXUCL talk in December 2015: Why science needs people who cry. As a member of the Reclaim the Internet campaign, there are further interviews with her speaking about the online harassment around Tim Hunt, without directly identifying the episode.)

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Disclosures: I have a full-time day job. Blogging and cartooning are my hobbies, and income related to those activities is below the threshold applicable to me for conflict of interest. I've been a member of the American science writing community since 2012, include for a time blogging on the Scientific American Blog Network. (I moved to the US in 2011). I'm an occasional contributor to MedPage Today, where Ivan Oransky is global editorial director. I have come to know Deborah Blum in the last few months, in the context of discussing continuing education for journalists (which has been an area of occasional teaching for me for many years). I don't believe I have ever met Tim Hunt, Louise Mensch, or Connie St Louis.

The thoughts I express here are personal, and do not represent the views of the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (or any organization with which I am associated).